


The Fragments Left To Them

by inkbrush (Klaus_Kartoffel)



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Originally Published: 12.09.2002, Post-Season/Series 06 AU, Romance, written by inkbrush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:15:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27575042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Klaus_Kartoffel/pseuds/inkbrush
Summary: He was like her first kiss of air, and it made him hers.
Relationships: Willow Rosenberg/Spike
Comments: 3
Kudos: 19





	The Fragments Left To Them

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for S6.
> 
> Note from the poster: This story is ENTIRELY by inkbrush, who has been informed that their fic has been posted here on AO3. Here is the original link where I found the story: http://archive.shriftweb.org/archive/12/thefragments.html
> 
> My intent is to archive stories that I think are worthwhile and in danger of disappearing from the internet altogether.

He taught her how to skip stones. It was all in the choosing: round, flat rocks without edges that she could fold her palm over comfortably. She'd stay low and concentrate on keeping the stone parallel to the water's surface, and then she would let it dance across the lake and jump up and clap her hands with each skip, laughing. When she turned around he was always right there, unexpectedly close, so that she had to hang onto his shoulders and he had to grab her waist to keep balance.

"Twelve!" she said, grinning. "Can you and your vampire strength beat that?"

Of course he could, but he played along. "You sneak out here during daytime to practice, don't you?"

The laughter left her swiftly, as it was all too easy for it to do these days. Things were getting better though. There wasn't just emptiness left anymore. "No," she said seriously. "I never come out here without you. That would be missing the whole point."

His face was all sharp angles and shadows lined up against pale skin, but she watched it soften. And just before he bent to kiss her, she understood with the stark clarity of winter how Buffy could have been drawn to him.

He was hers now. She didn't pretend to know why, only that it was so. And perhaps something inside her saw how a vampire could bond so surely to his sire. It was feeling the wood splintering against your knuckles and the sudden heavy weight of earth trying to press you back down, and when you finally clawed your way out and gained a sweet, sweet breath, there was someone there beside you. She'd never been in a coffin but she imagined that her last acts of magic had served as nails in the lid.

When Spike had come back it had been like encountering him at the same time as when she found air. These things left an impression, a bond that only shortened and pulled them together when they learned how they'd gone through something similar. Spike had dug his way out of a grave, twice. Once literally, and then figuratively--he'd told her what he had tried to do to Buffy, and how the guilt of it had buried him, and what he'd done about it. And then the very soul he thought would give him Buffy had made it impossible for him to seek her love. "I've brought her too much pain. Better just to leave," he'd said as they spoke of moving north together.

She had nowhere else to go, after all. Her friends loved her but they didn't trust her, and making her mouth smile at them was like bending iron. Buffy was the responsible leader who shuttled her out of the way--out of harm's way, she claimed, but something in the defensive manner she held herself said that it was Willow who endangered others. Dawn's arm had surely ached whenever she was around, the way sailors' old breaks would warn of impending storms, and Anya was brightly oblivious to all the undercurrents. Xander wanted to rewind her and force her into an old mold that for better or worse she'd long since shattered, and Giles, oh God, bent a disapproving glare upon her as though she were a puppy that had soiled the carpet.

But Spike hadn't acted uneasy in her presence and was, in fact, part of the ostracized two-member satellite group of the Scoobies. He talked to her about whatever she wanted to talk about and was frank about it; no avoiding the word "magic," no falsely chirpy unimportant conversational threads started whenever she stepped into the room. Even when she confessed to him what she had done, because she couldn't imagine any of the others being able to suck up enough courage to say it aloud, he hadn't judged, hadn't flinched away, only muttered, "Yeah, I know how love can drive you to things like that," and she'd teared up. It felt good to cry without someone smothering her with Kleenexes and trying to get her to stop sniffling. He only put his hand on her shoulder at first, but then when the sobs grew to the point where she'd thought they would tear her apart, he'd held her together, arms tight around her.

They hadn't made love then, although she'd thought about it later in bed, watching the unmoving ceiling. Tara had been lush and soft, easy to rest against. She remembered Oz though, and he had been a bit like Spike, his skin rougher and the flesh under it hard with muscle. After she was with Tara she'd decided that she disliked that about guys, but that night she changed her mind. It would be good to have the hands on her be large and callused and a little too forceful in their caresses; to have sharp hips jabbing into her thighs, and to have her flesh invaded by a stiff cock instead of a curling tongue. Spike's hair wouldn't fall across her skin like a river of silk, and there wouldn't be that warm spot between Tara's breasts where Willow had liked to lay her head. But nonetheless there was a quickening of her pulse as she imagined the texture of his body against hers.

What she hadn't imagined was how Spike would kiss her the way he was doing now: tracing the outline of her lips with his tongue, leaving a moist trail, and then tugging gently at her lower lip with his teeth. She opened her mouth to him and with the wet coolness of his kiss she felt an answering dampness below. Her pulse jumped and she knew he could hear it; she felt his arousal pressing into her. She rubbed her hips up against him slowly. His mouth became brutal on hers, brusing in its pressure.

It was always like this, each of them echoing the other's response, so that a tender good-night embrace would escalate into a raw fuck. Spike used to mistrust that savage kick of desire he elicited in her. "She used me," he'd said shortly, the first time she kissed him. There had been no need to explain who.

"It's not like that," she'd said, lips still tingling from his response before he had pulled away. "It's not about forgetting Tara or pretending you care for me." But it was, of course, and she'd forgotten that he had already gotten his comfort sex from Anya before he left. She was bitter enough to say so.

"Anya was--" And he gave a big sigh, and she waited through it because she knew he was frustrated with himself and not with her. "Anya wasn't really interested in me. No messy feelings at stake."

"You're saying that if you slept with me I'd break my heart over you?" she asked, incredulous.

The smile he wore was a new once since he returned: wry and a little self-deprecating. "No, pet. The other way around. You wouldn't have to pretend that I care, see."

She used to be jealous of Buffy's assorted lovers, because of this kneejerk thrill, the elation one got from receiving a valentine back in elementary school, but tenfold. You could only realize that someone loved you for the first time once per person, and each time it was a little different. She knew what to do with it now, and didn't let it make her abashed. Instead she stepped even closer to him and said clearly, "That's okay, then. We can both break our hearts and mend each other's."

She'd been lying a little. She hadn't expected at all to fall in love with him, although in the weeks previous she had come to learn and like his new, gentler side. The leftover pieces of their lives amounted to a little more when together, that was all.

How mistaken she'd been. It was only when they were together that the fragments left to them became whole.

Spike finally broke away, his hair mussed because her hands had somehow migrated into it. "Better get home," he said, but he didn't let go of her.

"Yeah." She waited for his hands to ease away and then tucked her arm through his. He pressed her tightly to her side as they walked out the park. It had taken them a while, but they no longer engaged in wild races back to their bed, no longer felt that horrible urgency to rip each other's clothes off whenever they got aroused. She knew that this would last, that a easy, knowing touch on his part could bring her back to readiness, and that Buffy and the rest of the gang wouldn't suddenly materialize in front of them with an array of shocked and accusing gazes. They'd built something stable here, stable and beautiful.

Their apartment was small and unremarkable: studio, but they didn't mind living in close quarters together--preferred it, in fact--and her job couldn't pay for much more, anyway. He flipped on the light because they liked to see each other, while she began to undress.

"Here, I'll help," he said, and she turned around so that he could get the clasp at the back of her bra. Instead he kissed the side of her neck, then slipped off one of the straps and kissed her bare shoulder. She arched back and let her head fall back against his chest. When she tipped her face up, he laid his mouth over hers. His fingers slid up her arm and pulled down the other strap. His palm rubbed her shoulder briefly.

"Mmm...." She hummed in pleasure then pulled away to let him unfasten her bra, which fell to the floor. When she turned around he stroked the undersides of her breasts. Their tips felt taut and she set her hands under his, guiding them upward. His fingers circled around the areolae before closing over her nipples, and she gasped and felt them grow even tighter. Her voice was breathy. "You need to catch up with the discarding clothes thing." To emphasize her point, she slid her palms underneath his shirt.

He stripped it off quickly and she ran her hands over all that white skin, finding the contours that defined each individual muscle. Spike curled his palm against the back of her neck and pulled her in for another kiss, and her breasts pressed against his chest: bare flesh against bare flesh, but not enough. She tugged his zipper down, freeing his cock just as his tongue pushed into her mouth. She stroked him once; his tongue stroked the roof of her mouth.

He pushed her backwards then, and she had memorized the distance to the bed, knew just when to let her legs fold and the mattress catch her. He set his hands on either side of her ribs and lowered his head to her breast. He suckled hard, surprising her with some teeth, and there would be impressions of each whorl and ridge of her fingerprints set on his shoulders afterward. He moved lower so that all she could see was the pale, disarrayed hair, and that wonderful and cruel pressure was applied to her clit.

Willow moaned and drew her knees up and apart. He raised his head for half a moment and there was the flash of his grin, but before she could start begging his tongue was laving her clit while a single finger pushed wetly inside of her. She was panting when he drew it out, then inserted it again, this time with another finger. They moved in a steady rhythm, but it wasn't enough. She reached down and pulled insistently at him, and he dragged himself up her body to smile into her eyes.

They always spoke during sex, a babble of incoherence and utterly sincere meanings.

"God, so hot, burning--"

"Do you like this?"

"Fuck! Again!"

"There, right there."

"Love you like this, all tense, on the verge."

"Feel it so deep...."

"Come on, love, reach for it."

"You--"

"Can't. Jesus, can't."

"Yes, yes!"

He stopped with his cock buried in her all the way, arms straining to keep his upper body above her so that she could lick her way along his chest. But she knew he was coming when he said softly, "Willow."

And then he was gasping and she felt the rush of his release filling her. She might have said his name, once or a dozen times, but she was lost to everything but that last warm friction across her clit that sent her sprawling into another climax.

Tangled in each other and the sheets, they slowly returned to languorous awareness. She winced a little when he lifted himself off her and dropped to one side, because he brushed her sensitive nipples. But she turned and hugged him against her. Her hair was sweat-soaked and plastered to her neck, and he brushed it aside for her.

They had to sleep now; in the morning she would have to rise early and go to work. It would be a tiring week; every week was. Spike would be restless, cooped up in their apartment. But on the weekends they always had their nights together, and there was more than bedplay. They went out and laughed and drank and visited places with loud music where they could dance, or sometimes the quietude of the park. Though in the darkness they could never feed pigeons together, or have a picnic under the shade of her namesake, they managed. They skipped stones instead, and sometimes they went so far she never saw them sink and vanish into the water.

**Author's Note:**

> Again: Credit where credit is due. This is not my story. This is entirely by inkbrush!


End file.
